At the first presentation of the two joint awards of High Fidelity.pl and hifistatement.net last November during the Audio Video Show in Warsaw, the giving of the awards was exactly as Wojtek Pacula and I had imagined. The second time a pandemic intervened.

In Warsaw we had – as reported – invited Johann Graham, Alex Brady and Robert Hay to a nice restaurant in the evening after a day at the trade fair, we spent many pleasant hours there with animated discussions and of course presented the awards. Johann Graham and Alex Brady had accepted the award for Nordost, with which the colleague had honoured the QPoint, a so-called Resonance Synchonizer. 

With Robert Hay, I had switched all the power supply of my Hifi system to Audioquests power filters and cables in a little more than a day at the end of 2018. Afterwards, the "LowZ/Noise-Dissipation" network technology developed by Garth Powell impressed three of my colleagues and me to such an extent that we presented it with one of the first two International Awards.

A similarly cosy evening in a Bavarian restaurant with adjoining beergarden during this year's High End was firmly planned to give Rune Skov of Gryphon Audio Designs the award for the Ethos, one of the - as Wojtek Pacula thinks, wrongfully - rare high-end CD players. Alan Ainslie, who has established Melco as a brand in Europe, and Melco's Managing Director Daniel Raggett should also have been in on the act. It would have been up to them to accept the prize for the expensive, but nevertheless very reasonably prized audiophile switch from the Japanese digital specialists. The S100 stands out, apart from its extremely positive sonic effects, for its completely unique and sometimes surprising solutions.

Bavarian culinary delights or not, the two International Awards were of course awarded despite travel restrictions and restaurant closures. So we added a robust, tropical-proof case to each of the Plexiglas creations, and the boxes were already on their way to Denmark and England. We wanted to document the award ceremony with a video conference. But, believe it or not, even five people with an affinity for technology were not able to get into conversation. Should Skype be more complicated than High-End or network technology?

Finally, Wojtek Pacula and I talked to the prize winners on different days, which would also explain the different picture backgrounds. But it is not only the poor picture quality that leaves a lot to be desired: without direct contact even the most entertaining conversations are only half as nice. Let's hope, no, not for the fair in Warsaw, a show in November might not be able to go ahead, but for the possibility of a personal handing over of the third STATEMENTs in High Fidelity!